By Clem Oluwole
There is this popular axiom which says: “If you stay too long defecating in the open, all manner of flies will come and keep you company”. The sayers perhaps had President Goodluck Jonathan in mind when they coined the aphorism. For the past four years, the president has been defecating, as it were, in the vast open space of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. And the faeces? The Boko Haram, of course!
When President Jonathan stepped into the shoes of his late boss, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, less than a year after the sect’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was captured and shot dead extra-judicially by security operatives, the militancy was at its inchoate state and confined to Maiduguri with occasional sorties to places like Yobe and Bauchi axis.
The Jonathan administration had every opportunity to make history by nipping the insurgency in the bud at its less dangerous state like his late boss did in the Niger Delta axis to bring stability to the beleaguered region.
He had several options on his table. But for parochial reasons, he hemmed and hawed until the madness spiraled out of control. The sing song in the political circle has been that the crises in most parts of the North are a calculated design to make Nigeria ungovernable for him by those who lost out in the 2011 presidential race. So, he does not give a damn if the instability agenda is backfiring on the region that produced the perceived foes of his administration using the deadly instrumentality of the Boko Haram.
Now back to the open defecation. President Jonathan hesitated to do the right thing at the right time. As the commander-in-chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, he failed to provide the right tools to prosecute the peculiar war. Rather, he expected his crestfallen troops kitted with outmoded arsenals akin to those used in the Second World War to bring down the insurgency that is fired by modern weapons and equipment placed in the (wrong) hands of these ruthless elements.
By defecating in the open for longer than necessary, the president invited flies of different species and sizes from all over the world to himself. I know that he has not been spared by the local media and commentators who have been strident in lampooning him for running a corrupt and clueless government. The attacks have always been dismissed by the president and his spin doctors as calculated attempts by his political enemies to undermine his administration.
But the vituperation by the international media and observers that trailed the abduction of over 200 Chibok girls on April 14, 2014, has exposed the president to global mockery. Now, look at the following green flies coming from the former US foreign secretary, Hilary Clinton: “Nigeria is a failed state”; from the New York Times in its editorial: “Jonathan runs a corrupt government with little credibility” and from The Economist: “He is clueless and incompetent”.
It took the abduction saga to expose the rudderless nature of the nation’s leadership for the whole world to see. Before the April 14 episode, there have been gruesome killings and isolated abductions going on almost on daily basis in the North-east axis for a very long time: from Baga to Bama; from Buni Yadi to Gujba; from Gamboru Ngala to Konduga and to Igze. Not to speak of the massive destruction of public and private properties. Every dark cloud, says a maxim, has a silver lining. But it is unfortunate that the plight of those innocent girls had to serve as a wake-up call for international intervention in the festering menace which now gives
Nigerians a ray of hope. Before now, the criminal elements have been having a field day wherever they chose to strike.
As I said earlier, it had to take the abduction of the Chibok girls that triggered the international condemnations to get our president to do the needful. Protests have been staged across the globe: the UK, the US, Turkey, Senegal, Ghana, name them. Never before has Nigeria been in the eye of the storm like now.
It is hard to believe that the federal government initially refused foreign help especially from the US. Considering the levity with which the situation was handled long before now, I am tempted to believe the story. A stitch in time, it is said, saves nine. We had wallowed in self-delusion that we have the capacity to deal with the menace.
Ability? Yes, we have it. But the capacity? We lack it.
In this space on March 7, this year, I wrote a piece entitled: Terror war, does Nigeria need help? I had written: “Be that as it may, methinks we need help. Our military is fighting a war they are not used to. Terror war is a different ball game. Nigeria has helped other countries in restoring peace.
It will not be out of place to seek help from those countries that have passed through this same route, more so since the insurgents are known to be having the backing of international terrorists.”
There now appears to be light at the end of the tunnel… a ray of hope for the people of the beleaguered axis. Here is hoping that the girls whose abduction has led to external support to put down the insurgency will be reunited with their families unharmed and be part of the happy ending.